Did You Know...

“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a question.” – Patches O’Houlihan, personal trainer to David Axelrod and Jay Carney
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Sadly, “I’ll Have Another” wasn’t able to get his shot, but Obama advisor David Axelrod scored a Triple Crown of his own in question dodging.

Axelrod was on CNN’s State of the Union this morning, and host Candy Crowley asked him if he agreed with President Obama’s statement during last week’s press conference that the “private sector is doing fine.” Axelrod dodged the question three times, but did manage to make it clear that any problems we’re now facing are Europe’s fault (I had no idea Bush moved to Europe). Video by way of Ed Morrissey:

Axelrod said the “private sector is certainly doing better than the public sector,” but according to data at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for government workers is 4.2 percent (h/t Twitchy and Jay Caruso). That doesn’t really matter though because what Axelrod means is that government isn’t nearly as big as it should be and that the public sector employment rate is too low (but believe it or not, Axelrod’s boss recently took credit for trimming the government workforce, so they really need to pick a story and go with it).

After Obama’s remark Friday, Mitt Romney responded by asking if there’s ever been an American president who is so disconnected from reality as to believe that an America where 23 million Americans are out of work has a private sector that is “doing fine.” Team Obama’s reaction to that is pretty much “there wouldn’t be 23 million Americans out of work if we created 23 million government jobs.” Problem solved! The unanswered question is how there can be so many people available for public sector work if the private sector is “doing fine.”

Related: On ABC’s This Week, Axelrod said he’s absolutely certain the recent national security leaks didn’t originate from the White House. Well I guess we can drop the whole thing then, eh?